Interview: Cardinals Farm Director John Vuch

The leader of the St. Louis Cardinals minor league system discusses the transition into short-season play.

This past weekend in St. Louis, I sat down with Cardinals farm director John Vuch to discuss a few specific areas.

One is how the organization deals with the crunch period just completed in between the end of extended spring training and the First-Year Player Draft and the start of short-season play. There are roughly 100 players at different knowledge, experience and conditioning levels that need to be assessed, sorted out and assigned to clubs.

The second major topic is about which players from extended showed well. Though we can ascertain some of the big picture from the levels at which players were assigned, that is imprecise, especially with no stats available. Vuch fills us in on several of the standouts, mostly pitchers.

Of course, there are other items of note included in the discussion as well.